Technology

Where the placebo goes, can the nocebo be far behind? In This Book May Cause Side Effects, Helen Pilcher, a science writer and TV presenter with a PhD in cell biology, delves into the placebo’s “evil twin”—the myriad ways that our negative expectations affect us. If you had chills, fatigue, or headaches after getting a COVID shot, she writes, they were likely due to your being told those are frequent “side effects.” If you read the list of symptoms that your newly prescribed drug “might” produce, chances are you will experience one or more of them—and possibly decide not to take that drug after all. “If just the thought of eating a certain food makes you feel sick,” she writes, “it’s highly likely that placebo’s evil twin has struck again. Indeed, many of those who believe they have intolerances to certain ingredients, such as lactose or gluten, may well owe their misery to psychological rather than physical processes.” When self-reported “gluten intolerant” people are given gluten-free bread but told that the bread contains gluten, very often they develop gastrointestinal symptoms. “And when some gluten-intolerant people are covertly fed regular bread but told that it’s gluten-free, they don’t get symptoms,” Pilcher writes. “It’s the idea of gluten that they are intolerant to, rather than theprotein itself.”

Simon Calvert is Deputy Director at The Christian Institute, which has opposed the trans agenda for well over two decades. He was among the critics welcoming the pause while urging the government to go further and cancel it completely.

“It is dangerous and immoral to use children as guinea pigs for drugs that we already know are harmful for them and useless at treating gender dysphoria,” he said.

“In the overwhelming majority of cases, childhood confusion about gender typically resolves during puberty. So these drugs block the very process which relieves that confusion.

“We must hope and pray this outbreak of common sense is permanent and that the trial never goes ahead.”

Puberty blockers for people under the age of 18 questioning their gender have been banned in the UK since 2024.

James Esses, a therapist and leading campaigner against the puberty blockers trial, recently joined with other opponents to launch High Court action aimed at stopping the trial from going ahead.

He said, “This is a huge victory but now we must compel them to abandon it completely. This poison must never enter another child’s body.”

Dr — now Baroness — Hilary Cass’s four-year inquiry into NHS youth gender services painted a shameful picture of what had taken place at the now-closed gender identity development service (Gids) at the Tavistock in north London. All under the eye of NHS England, politicians and healthcare regulators. Youth gender medicine was “an area of remarkably weak evidence,” Cass said. There was “no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress”.

Among the most damning of her observations, though, was that the NHS had allowed the routine prescribing of puberty-blocking drugs to gender-distressed children for a decade, without any robust data to support that decision. […]

Perhaps the most surprising omission from the protocol, was acknowledgment that puberty blockers are highly unlikely to be a standalone treatment. Rather, they are part of a pathway towards medical transition. And with that comes a very real risk of infertility. There is no evidence that blockers on their own impact fertility (partly because so few children have come off the drugs, and gender clinics haven’t bothered to try to find them). But worldwide studies show in excess of 90 per cent of those who commence treatment with puberty blockers continue on to masculinising or feminising hormones. Early puberty blockade followed immediately by hormones means there is no opportunity for children’s eggs or sperm to mature.

The MHRA — which approved this trial in the first place — has now acknowledged these points, and more. “The expected effects of the drugs include the sterilising effect of puberty blockers followed by cross sex hormones,” the regulator said unequivocally in a letter to KCL. Treatment with puberty blockers beyond a year could “result in persistent and potentially permanent bone structural change,” it added. A government spokesperson described the MHRA’s intervention as raising “new concerns — directly related to the wellbeing of children and young”.

Let’s be clear, these concerns are not “new”. They have been raised in recent months by concerned medics, ethicists, clinicians and journalists. And they have been known for years.